Bengaluru based Web 3 platform MetaSky announced on Thursday that it has raised $1.8 Mn from Sequoia and Woodstuck Fund in a token sale round. The Bengaluru based startup was founded by Ankit Arora and Prakhar Sharma in 2021. The platform touts itself as a bridge to web 3.0. it essentially aims to create immersive web 3.0 experience for  its users by offering them NFT wallet, Web3 clubs and other important Web3 applications.

Commenting on the pre-seed funding round, MetaSky’s Co-founder said “Concepts like NFT only make sense if they are accompanied by a strong sense of utilities, a passionate community and real governance rights. We’re building Web3 tools to serve this purpose.” Furthermore, the company claims that its NFT wallet can easily integrate inside any existing website or application, turning any existing app into web 3.0 app.

Recently, MetaSky started its first project – a community-led-play-to earn game called ‘Tanukibies.’ The startup said that anyone can become part of the Tanukibies by buying limited editions of Tanukis. The company will put Tanukis on sale in next month. I.e. April.

Over the last few months, web 3.0 has received lot of media coverage. Web 3.0 is essentially touted as the next iteration or next chapter in the internet technology. This new technology is basically build on the core philosophy of decentralization, offering decentralized model of data storage and usage.

However, many people have casted their doubt about Web 3.0’s ability to maintain a decentralized model.

Last year, Twitter’s former CEO and fintech startup Block’s current CEO Jack Dorsey created quite a controversy  when he voiced his criticism about Web 3.0 on Twitter.

Dorsey claimed that Web 3.0 is being increasingly controlled by big VCs & LPs and hence it is not really decentralized as it claims to be.

On the very same day, Elon Musk also tweeted that Web 3.0 hasn’t really lived up to its expectation. However, Musk’s tweet was cryptic in nature.

Jack Dorsey Tweet

Elon Musk Tweet

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HR tech platform Drawinbox announced on Tuesday that it has raised $72 Mn in its Series D round. Technology Crossover Ventures led the round while existing investors Salesforce Ventures, Sequoia India, Lightspeed India and others took part in the round.

According to Drawinbox’s official statement, the company clocked the post-funding valuation of more than $1 Bn following the series D round. This makes Drawinbox the fourth unicorn of this year and takes its total external funding to over $110 Mn. It is the first startup from the HR space to clock a billion dollar valuation. It is also the first SaaS startup to join the unicorn club in the ongoing calendar year.     

Last year, the company secured a $15 Mn in a funding round led by Salesforce Ventures. This was CRM giant Salesforce’s first major investment in India.

The company said that among other things the funds will be mainly used for expanding its presence in South Asia, SEA and MENA. The company further added that it is gearing up to launch its product in the U.S. later this year.

Drawinbox is a cloud-based HR platform that caters  to all the important needs of the HR industry. From payroll management, interview processing & recruitment and analytics across life cycle management.

Usually big as well as mid-size companies heavily rely on HR SaaS software to meet their HR needs efficiently.

Drawinbox was founded in 2015 by Chaitanya Peddi, Jayant Paleti and Rohit Channamaneni.

With Indian startup industry witnessing fourth unicorn in the first month of 2022 itself, there is every possibility this year too will be a good year for startups pursuing the unicorn dream. That said, many market experts keep questioning these lofty valuations especially after the Paytm IPO debacle.   

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On Thursday India’s rapidly growing unicorn club added another member after edtech startup Lead School announced that it has raised $100 Mn in Series E round. WestBridge Capital and GSV Ventures spearheaded the round. This is their largest edtech investment, according to the statement issued by the VC firms.    

Lead School is the 6^th edtech startup to join the coveted unicorn club. It is also the third unicorn of 2022, after Mamaearth and Fractal joined the club earlier this month. This is the 6^th institutional round for the Mumbai based startup since 2017.

The company will use the proceedings to further its ambition of providing affordable quality education to more than 25 Mn students at an annual run rate of $1 Bn. Simultaneously, it will use the funds to improve its products, curriculum innovation, expanding its footprints and ramping up hiring across the functions.    

Lead School was founded by husband-wife duo Summet Yashpal Mehta and Smita Deorah (see the image) in 2012. The duo started the startup with the aim of reforming and developing India’s primary schools, which is by far the most neglected part of India’s educational system.

Most edtech majors like Byju’s and Vedantu focus on improving the academic performance of K12 students. But Lead School has taken a different route by attempting to reform the very foundation of the educational system, the schools.

Lead School claims that its partner schools are able to provide affordable quality education by giving exposure to students to modern infrastructure, highly trained teachers, deeply researched and highly innovative curriculum.

“If India has to achieve its true potential, its school has to significantly transform so that every child can achieve their true potential. But in K-12, everyone has been talking about edtech that is direct-to-students by circumventing schools. And Every one focuses on test prep and tuitions. Because people have accepted that schools cannot be improved. But we thought differently. A child spends six hours in schools and one hour in tuition. If we can transform schools, imagine what is possible? That’s why we focused on school edtech,”  Smita Deorah said.         

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Open source low code platform Tooljet announced on Wednesday that it has raised $1.5 Mn in a seed funding round. VC firm Nexus Venture Partners spearheaded the round while Ratio ventures, Better capital and Alan Rutledge also participated in the round.

The seed funding round equally saw participation from several angel investors including Rohan Murty (founder of Soroco), Sony Joy (head of Enterprise at Truecaller), Vipul Amler (founder of Saeloun), Mohammed Hisamuddin (founder of Entri )and Abhi Kumar of M12 Ventures.

The company said that it plans to use the seed funding for expanding its team to accelerate the development of the core platform of ToolJet.

Tooljet’s open source low coding software essentially help companies  in building their internal tools with minimum engineering efforts. The company claims that its platform has been adopted  by scores of startups and even unicorns. The company further claims that it currently has integrations with more than 15 data sources such as MongoDB, PostgreSQL, Google Sheets and AWS S3.

ToolJet was founded last year (2021) by Navaneeth PK. Navaneeth has previously co-founded MobioPush, which was acqui-hired by SaaS unicorn and U.S. listed company Freshworks in 2015.

“Companies are under pressure to do more with what they have. Open-source low-code tools enable developers to deliver what the business needs quickly and securely with enough flexibility to customize and extend,” said ToolJet Founder and CEO Navaneeth PK.

Commenting on the seed funding round, “Sameer Brij Verma, Director, Nexus Venture Partners, commented, “We are thrilled to partner with ToolJet’s team on their journey to build a revolutionary open-source low-code / no-code platform with the built-in collaboration which will enable their customers to radically increase their operational clock speed and ability to launch new products.”

The global low-code development technologies market is projected to $13.8 billion in 2021 according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc. Low-code adoption is boosted by the cost optimization efforts and remote development due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

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